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Jedit posted:I missed that in my phone. But also right next to it a misspelling of Nevil Shute.
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Sep 20, 2021 11:48
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Wait a minute, "Dong's Adventures in the Boner Brigade” never came out in hardcover!
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Sep 20, 2021 12:33
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Ironically enough!
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Sep 20, 2021 13:30
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My Lovely Horse posted:As well as that, "Steven" If my name were easily confused with "Stephen King" you can bet your rear end I'd write a book called "IT" 
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Sep 20, 2021 14:06
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Hispanic! At The Disco posted:If my name were easily confused with "Stephen King" you can bet your rear end I'd write a book called "IT" Reminds me of the time a very cross older man came up to me in the bookshop I was then working at to complain that he'd been tricked into buying a book - he wanted the latest Jeffrey Archer but oh no, he'd bought a book by Geoffrey Archer
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Sep 24, 2021 10:30
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e: eh
My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Sep 24, 2021 |
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Sep 24, 2021 11:22
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edit: need to think this through a bit more, or maybe just skip it.
JacquelineDempsey fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Sep 25, 2021 |
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Sep 25, 2021 01:48
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"Fat people shouldn't work with kids" is one hell of a take. If she was a piece of poo poo, tell us about that, not how much you hated her for being unattractive.
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Sep 25, 2021 02:02
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i like nice words
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Anne Whateley posted:"Fat people shouldn't work with kids" is one hell of a take. If she was a piece of poo poo, tell us about that, not how much you hated her for being unattractive. That wasn't my point ( worded it poorly in my attempt to dunk on this particular person). Fair enough, and I was a bit wary about putting that in there. I'd hoped that I'd tempered that with "we all really hated her for being ugly inside, not outside", but I guess that didn't work out so well. I'm sorry and will shut up. JacquelineDempsey fucked around with this message at 02:14 on Sep 25, 2021 |
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Sep 25, 2021 02:06
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It's fine to hate her for her inside, but the post was 80% about hating her for her outside
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Sep 25, 2021 02:09
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Anne Whateley posted:It's fine to hate her for her inside, but the post was 80% about hating her for her outside I was trying to set up the scenario for how she got that nickname, which was 12 years and a whole lotta "me and my co-workers not being sensitive to things" ago. Goons wanted to hear about "Fiona", I started at the beginning. I sincerely apologize if I've offended anyone, I just got on a writing tear and apparently went too far.
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Sep 25, 2021 02:33
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Anne Whateley posted:"Fat people shouldn't work with kids"
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Sep 25, 2021 07:48
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Pookah posted:Reminds me of the time a very cross older man came up to me in the bookshop I was then working at to complain that he'd been tricked into buying a book - he wanted the latest Jeffrey Archer but oh no, he'd bought a book by Geoffrey Archer What about the well-known Dutch author Charles Dikkens?
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Sep 25, 2021 17:13
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therattle posted:What about the well-known Dutch author Charles Dikkens? We don't talk about him. Why don't you try Reddit?
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Sep 29, 2021 15:36
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Some other department wanted to put some event details on our info screen so I sketched up a custom layout for them in Photoshop and ended up liking it so much that I kind of want to change ours and kept hoping they wouldn't want it. Which they don't, so I guess I've got a project now! I've pretty much managed to become the library's own design and A/V guy so my stories are gonna have less and less to do with actual library stuff, more design and video and trying to fly under university PR's radar. e: do we have something like graphic design, print design, video production etc. threads anywhere?
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Oct 6, 2021 10:29
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Parahexavoctal posted:We don't talk about him. Why don't you try Reddit?
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Oct 6, 2021 16:01
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My Lovely Horse posted:Some other department wanted to put some event details on our info screen so I sketched up a custom layout for them in Photoshop and ended up liking it so much that I kind of want to change ours and kept hoping they wouldn't want it. Which they don't, so I guess I've got a project now! very much so, Creative Convention is a few blocks down on the right https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3367934&pagenumber=1&perpage=40
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Oct 6, 2021 16:42
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Red Oktober posted:Wait a minute, "Dong's Adventures in the Boner Brigade” never came out in hardcover! We sorta made a book with a similar title theme in GiP a while back, "Military Members: An Illustrative History of the War on Terror"
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Oct 7, 2021 04:38
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so successful it's been through what, four print runs now? Did it ever get an ISBN?
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Oct 7, 2021 14:16
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It's up to the third edition, I forget how many runs we did with it. No ISBN but someone told me they sent it to the Smithsonian library
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Oct 7, 2021 16:10
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A while ago I was posting about a student collective's idea to have a designated queer feminist literature shelf for a semester to increase visibility for the whole topic, I'm happy to report that it's been quite the success, we're cooperating well and it looks great and is getting a lot of attention, including from local radio, and is already a successful project. anyway the students looked at the display case we set up and remarked they could additionally decorate with "some items relevant to the idea of queer feminism", we said sure, knock yourselves out, and as I was walking past the other day I did a double take when I realized they'd put one single diva cup among the books and nothing else
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Oct 14, 2021 07:42
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My Lovely Horse posted:A while ago I was posting about a student collective's idea to have a designated queer feminist literature shelf for a semester to increase visibility for the whole topic, I'm happy to report that it's been quite the success, we're cooperating well and it looks great and is getting a lot of attention, including from local radio, and is already a successful project. a solid teachable moment for younger people who may not yet realize that not all women have vaginas or menstrual cycles imo.
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Oct 17, 2021 08:21
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they've since added a sign saying literally that 
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Oct 17, 2021 09:58
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My Lovely Horse posted:they've since added a sign saying literally that yesssss, that’s awesome.
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Oct 18, 2021 02:56
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We're getting traffic light CO2 indicators for our offices, in today's department meeting they mentioned we were also getting one for the reception desk. "What do we actually do at reception when the light goes red, there's no windows we can open?" "uh. Let us get back to you on that."
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Oct 27, 2021 09:48
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Just got an e-mail from the department head that we should now please break up study groups of more than 3 persons which, maybe in the first place lecturers shouldn't assign group work in groups of five, especially if the university can't provide the space for them, and then, why tell us "enforce this rule from now on please" when what we should do is tell visitors "there's this new rule now, which we will enforce" and then when we do it and someone complains we can tap the sign with the rule. Or we need to actively create the space for study groups within whatever limitations we have and at least make it look like we're trying, right now it's just "you can't do that in here" - "but we have to" - "NOT MY PROBLEM".
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Oct 29, 2021 10:07
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So the library I work at is probably going fine-free next year, mainly because several other libraries in our system have already gone fine-free. I have mixed feelings about the idea. I can see why the patrons would like it, although the people in our immediate area should have little money worries (the median household income is around $250,000 if I’m reading the data from data.census.gov right). From the perspective of the staff it also makes things easier as it is one less thing to have to deal with. During the quarantine months of COVID we stopped charging fines on anything that was returned to our library and did alright, however we were closed on Sundays which lowered our costs somewhat (staff that worked Sundays was still paid however, which is fine by me since I work every Sunday). My only concern is that the money collected from fines does go to our operating budget and it basically covered the cost of us being open on Sundays. Still it is nice not to have a patron yell at me for a 10˘ fine. Any other thoughts on going fine free?
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Dec 7, 2021 20:21
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All Maryland public libraries went fine free earlier this year. Some of them are more well funded than others, but all of them are county government based or Baltimore City (with one exception that I refuse to acknowledge) so the funding isn't as tenuous as it would be in a small town. But it also meant that a lot of the fines that libraries took in went to a general government budget rather than straight back to the library so they're not necessarily missing it. But I think in general it's only good. It improves the library's image in the public consciousness, allows patrons who couldn't use the library but desperately need it to come back and most studies showed that fines didn't actually work as a good way to bring back materials. Increasing number of renewals also helps with this. The library I grew up with never had late fees and it seemed to work for them, also in an impoverished area. One public library I worked at in Ohio has a serious problem with theft and never returned materials. However, late fees don't help prevent either of these things either. So people who are going to not return materials on time or ever will keep doing it regardless, so might as well improve standing with everyone else. No part of a library's budget should depend on late fees. Because in a perfect world there would be none at all. So that's a larger discussion that the director needs to have with the funding source. For front line staff, it's almost always a positive move. So yay! Fewer angry people.
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Dec 7, 2021 23:52
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I'm not really in a position to fully understand our funding, but we're a city library system so a lot of it comes from city budget (I think), plus a millage that apparently does a lot for us as well. I asked about how much dropping late fees would screw with funding as was basically told it was a negligible amount of our income, like less than 1%. We were originally supposed to cut fines the week we shut for covid Instead we did it two months later when we reopened which I think actually worked out better. It got people thinking about checking out books again, and got those patrons that couldn't due to fines interested in coming back. The downside to doing it then was that we had to simultaneously deal with the "why are the doors blocked, why can't I come in to browse" patrons and the "ugh how are those people going to teach their kids responsibility without late fees" assholes and yes this is a real question that I was asked.
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Dec 8, 2021 00:37
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At all the public libraries I've worked at, this would be formalizing what was already reality. The people who did pay fines just owed a buck or less. The people who owed big fines would always kick up such a fuss that a librarian would inevitably waive the fines just to get rid of them.
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Dec 8, 2021 00:46
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a friendly penguin posted:All Maryland public libraries went fine free earlier this year. Some of them are more well funded than others, but all of them are county government based or Baltimore City (with one exception that I refuse to acknowledge) so the funding isn't as tenuous as it would be in a small town. But it also meant that a lot of the fines that libraries took in went to a general government budget rather than straight back to the library so they're not necessarily missing it. It sorta sucked when this came up on drive-time morning radio a few weeks ago. The hosts were talking about how Baltimore County had eliminated late fees and the co-host said "you can just keep stuff forever, the library doesn't care anymore," or something very close to that. Of course, on another occasion, same co-host also forgot the name of the previous library director, who she had interviewed a couple of times, so, you know, kind of a dipshit. Anyway, as far as I know customers like fine-free, but it did sort of render the student accounts through Baltimore County Public Schools sort of pointless.
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Dec 8, 2021 01:20
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My library system eliminated fines on kid and teen items but kept them for adult items. This happened before the pandemic. They also did a thing where kids and teens could do activities to get older fines waved. I think it's worked out pretty well. We have a large community of young parents who check out dozens of picture books at a time for their kids and even a day late on those could block an entire account depending on how many the parent checked out. If an item's overdue by 6 weeks or more, it's charged to the person's account, but bringing the item back erases the charge.
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Dec 8, 2021 02:45
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I brought my Drake posted:If an item's overdue by 6 weeks or more, it's charged to the person's account, but bringing the item back erases the charge. e: was on my phone, but to elaborate, I'm in a university library, where we raise late fees, and if someone doesn't return a book at all, we bill them for a replacement copy, same if they lose or damage it, and we've definitely had the case where someone brought back a book we already thought lost and had to try and reverse the replacement process we already started, up to and including cancelling the order, returning a book already received, or telling the person sorry, too late, replacement's already on the shelf. Personally I can definitely see the merits of going fine-free and skipping straight to the replacement process if we need to, we just definitely need to replace books we lose at some point. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 09:19 on Dec 8, 2021 |
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Dec 8, 2021 07:10
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The_Other posted:So the library I work at is probably going fine-free next year, mainly because several other libraries in our system have already gone fine-free. I have mixed feelings about the idea. I can see why the patrons would like it, although the people in our immediate area should have little money worries (the median household income is around $250,000 if I’m reading the data from data.census.gov right). From the perspective of the staff it also makes things easier as it is one less thing to have to deal with. During the quarantine months of COVID we stopped charging fines on anything that was returned to our library and did alright, however we were closed on Sundays which lowered our costs somewhat (staff that worked Sundays was still paid however, which is fine by me since I work every Sunday). My only concern is that the money collected from fines does go to our operating budget and it basically covered the cost of us being open on Sundays. Still it is nice not to have a patron yell at me for a 10˘ fine. I On top of that, fines should not represent a significant portion of your budget anyways, because I assume that the ideal case is minimizing the amount of late returns you have, which would minimize the money you make from fines.
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Dec 8, 2021 08:48
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I tend to agree, fines only make sense if you imagine a book club enthusiast or light library user that only checks out 1-3 books at a time. At our branch we do 20˘ per item per day, with a max of 30 items. We have a couple parents that aim for that maximum, so when fines are applied that’s $6 per day. Had a person just yesterday with ten movies that were 4 days overdue and had to tell them they had $8.80 on their card.
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Dec 8, 2021 13:11
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I once had to tell someone they had €80 in fines from ten overdue books and was bracing for a storm, but they just calmly said "oh dear, well can't be helped" and when they were gone I checked their account and they were all books on conflict management It does create vicious cycles sometimes. More than once we had students in who got a huge batch of books, ran late, and the first wave of fines per book triggered our "lock account if above X in fines" automatic, so they couldn't renew, but also not pay right away, and there would be the threat of the next wave of fines already looming. Which actually now that I spell it out for someone that sounds even dumber than I always thought and I'm gonna bring this up at some point, both that fine deathloop and the idea of going fine-free altogether.
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Dec 8, 2021 13:24
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My Lovely Horse posted:I once had to tell someone they had €80 in fines from ten overdue books and was bracing for a storm, but they just calmly said "oh dear, well can't be helped" and when they were gone I checked their account and they were all books on conflict management You should write that as review for the books
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Dec 8, 2021 14:39
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My library has been fine-free on kid’s stuff since 2005-ish and went fully fine-free in 2018. The first 6 months of 2018 we only took in about $30k less than the year before. The systems’s materials budget is I think around 3 million so basically a drop in the bucket. For us, once your items are 21 days late the price of the item is added to your card. As long as you bring it back within 2 years, the price comes off the card.
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Dec 8, 2021 15:30
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Whoof I guess that's a matter of general budgeting, we really do use those replacement fees to finance the replacement copy as directly as we can.
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Dec 8, 2021 15:45
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My Lovely Horse posted:What do you do if you've already purchased a replacement copy and they bring it back? Once someone's paid for the replacement, we don't give refunds, even if they find the book and bring it to us. Occasionally we'll take replacement copies if the replacement is brand new and the ISBNs match. The staff have a little bit of leeway to decide the best solution for a given situation and it's one of the things that I like about my job.
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Dec 8, 2021 20:09
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